Larry Bodine as a good post on the Law Marketing Blog called Law Firm Requires New Associates to Have Sales Background.

My reaction is that there are many potential advantages to hiring sales attorneys. The history of this approach in other professions, suggests that there are a number of hurdles to overcome to make it successful. These include:

1) Making sure that the new position is designed into the fabric of the firm and not just glued onto the side. This means that everybody’s job is affected in some way by this new approach to business getting. A firm that doesn’t note this and educate its other attorneys is likely to suffer from at least two outcomes:a) Some attorneys will think that because someone else has responsibility for sales they can abandon most of their own efforts, b) Other attorneys will freeze the new sales force out in the belief that they own certain accounts.

2) Making sure the new position and the people in it are respected members of the firm. There is a tendency for professionals to feel that anyone who doesn’t practice the profession in the traditional way is an ineffectual, contentless dweeb. The best sales attorneys will not stand for this and leave. There needs to be a career path for these people that includes partnership and practice leadership.

Also, the more movement there is between the traditional career path in the firm and the new sales career path, the better, because it reduces the them-versus-us mentality that plagues dedicated sellers in professional firms.

Suzanne Lowe is conducting another one-minute survey for her upcoming book. The title of this survey is “Are Marketing and Business Development Functions Stuck in a Rut?”

The professional services marketplace is rapidly changing, but many professional service firms (PSFs) have yet to keep pace by evolving the functional scope of their non-revenue generating Marketers and Business Developers.

We’re told many Marketers feel they’re treated like ‘cruise directors,’ stuck continuously putting out non-strategic fires. Their Business Development counterparts feel stuck, too, in an incessant ’shut-up-and-get-me-a-meeting’ mode.

Take this survey if you would like to find out how your professional firm compares to other PSFs at working to evolve the functional scope of their Marketing and Business Development positions.

If you’re interested in the results of her first one-minute survey, see her blog post: Hiring fee-earners who WANT to Market and Sell.

With the publication of his first book, Managing the Professional Service Firm, David Maister established himself as the dean of the study of the business side of professional firms.

His later books (True Professionalism, The Trusted Advisor (with Charles Green and Robert Galford), and Practice What You Preach) have titles that reflect his increasing conviction that the solution to a firm’s business problems lies in focusing on clients and values. Pay attention to your professional calling and the business issues will take care of themselves, he argues.

His recently published book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker, continues and expands upon this argument. I think this book important enough that I have sent it to some forty leaders of professional firms. But your appreciation of it will depend on your frame of mind when you read it. It is a strange combination of how-to and polemic that the cynics, who make up a significant share of the world’s professionals, may have a hard time with. In his view of the professions Maister fights cynicism.

That is largely a good thing. The title summarizes the weakness in most firms’ efforts to become more professional; the managers are like fat smokers who know that they should eat less and stop smoking, but haven’t the will to do so. This is an apt comparison that applies, in part, to me and to many others. In making this point and suggesting how to address it, he provides many statements that deserve to become standard aphorisms:

The necessary outcome of strategic planning is not analytical insight, but resolve.

An expert’s job is to be right; the advisor’s job is to be helpful.

People will never live up to a higher standard than their manager exhibits.

There are many such jewels.

This quest for greater professionalism as a solution to a firm’s problems sounds idealistic. That may put off readers with a practical bent. If that includes you, I urge you to take another look. There are at least two good reasons for doing so.

First, the concept of professionalism is under threat. It has now become standard for product and service companies to operate professional firms. (Tom Peters recently blogged about this.) While some, like IBM, have succeeded, many others have failed, often because they didn’t understand the implications of running a professional firm.

Also, more and more professional firms are going public. This can force them to think more about shareholder value than professional standards. Some firms are getting so large that they must be managed in ways that put little stress on being truly professional. To avoid the fate of Arthur Andersen it is good for all of us to reflect from time to time on what “being a professional” means. Maister’s research shows that focusing on clients and values isn’t just good practice. It’s also good business.

The second reason why Maister’s idealistic promotion of a truly professional firm warrants attention will surprise the cynics: What Maister extols is achievable, if you adjust for his frequent hyperbole. I have worked in the professions for over thirty years and have had the opportunity to study many firms. At any given time in each profession there are a handful of firms that are doing everything right and growing by topsy. I have the pleasure of having one such firm as a client now.

These firms come as close to Camelot as one can get in the business world. They do interesting and important work for their clients. Growing rapidly, they offer ample opportunity for their professionals to advance. And the money that flows in allows them to treat their people generously. The professionals at these firms have the joy of doing cutting-edge client work, while building the institution of the firm and getting rewarded handsomely. The leadership seeks to build an institution that is more important than any individual partner because of what it does for the profession, for society and for the partners as a whole. These firms are wonderful places to spend at least part of one’s career. Maister shows how to transform your firm into such an institution. It is a worthy goal.

That Maister overdoes his argument is unfortunate, because some readers will reject his overall case as a result. His argument that simply acting professionally will resolve all problems is naïve, if he does, in fact, believe it. It is hard to argue otherwise, when he says things like:

Firms do not need to teach their people how to sell. They need to find out, person by person, what kind of work turns each partner on and what kinds of clients each person could actually get interested in. [Emphasis in the original.]

In other words, put them in front of the right clients for the right kinds of work and their enthusiasm will carry the day. Hogwash! Enthusiasm does increase a professional’s chances of making a sale, but I have seen many enthusiastic professionals lose sales, because they talked too much, moved to solutions too quickly, sold past the close or made any one of a dozen other common sales mistakes that a little training would have cured them of.

Extending Maister’s logic to its obvious conclusion, if you just give your people the right kinds of thing to work on, you don’t have to teach them anything. Enthusiasm is all they need.

This anti-sales attitude is probably a reflection of a long-standing bias that many academics (Maister is a former Harvard Business School professor) and some professionals hold against the subject of selling. As I have noted elsewhere, very few business schools, and none of the leading ones, teach anything about selling. Marketing, finance, and operations are all taught, but not sales. This is all the more bizarre, because it is a sale that defines the existence of a business. Studying business without studying sales makes as much sense as studying biological procreation while ignoring sex. Maister should know this. Professional firms are commercial enterprises. Selling is essential for their success.

Skim past the occasional lapse of this kind and you will find Strategy and the Fat Smoker a worthwhile read.

The logic of selling professional services is simple.  If you meet the right people, stay in front of them by being helpful, and remind them of what you do from time to time, work will follow.

Don’t be deceived; execution on this logic isn’t simple because it requires managing so many parts.  The right people include not only those who can hire you, but also those who have enough influence with the hirers to introduce you to them.  In some cases you need to start even further back with those who have influence with the influencers.

First, you have to meet these people.  Some you get to know through your client work, but for most professionals that route is insufficient by itself.  You have to go to association meetings, give speeches, ask for referrals or try one of the other numerous ways to meet people.

Then you must stay in front of them.  That means meetings, calls and emails.  Your contacts will accept all this attention, as long as they find you helpful.  That complicates things even more, because different contacts want different kinds of help.  And the only way you can find out what each one wants is to ask.  Then you must . . .

About a month into this effort, the realization sinks in that you have barely begun and that all of what you have done so far is no more than the nose of a large camel bent on coming into your tent.  There is no way you can cram this additional activity into your already crammed schedule.

I have two answers to this concern.  First, if you treat business development as something to be crammed in, it will also be the first thing to get pushed out.  It must have a priority at least as high as your client work or it will never get done.  This changed view of the problem solves nothing by itself, but without the changed view, the problem won’t be solved. Rainmakers feel a high sense of urgency about starting and developing relationships.

Second, the camel isn’t as big as its nose suggests.  The time you must invest in starting or rekindling a relationship is typically much greater than the time needed to maintain one.  When beginning a relationship, you must spend time learning about the new contact as a business person and as a human being.  That may take several meetings and phone calls.  You must distinguish yourself from other would-be networkers by finding a way to help a contact.  That takes time, too.  It helps if you can accomplish these things in a relatively short time.  But once a relationship is established, a lot of maintenance and development can be done by phone and email.

As your network grows, all this meeting and calling and emailing does demand more time.  But, as you bring more and more business into your firm, you will be given more time for that kind of activity.

In the professions, this shift in time allocation from doer and manager of client work to rainmaker seldom occurs smoothly.  By some measure most professionals are overworked by their clients and firms.  The shift does occur, and as it does, you gain greater control over your own destiny.

When a prospective client asks several firms it is evaluating to present their qualifications one after another, it is usually referred to as a beauty contest or bakeoff.   Often it might more accurately be called a dollar auction.

A dollar auction is a game concocted by game theorist and economist, Martin Shubik.  Try it out, yourself.  It requires an auctioneer (presumably you), six or more others who will perform better if plied with alcohol for a few hours first, and a dollar bill.  Once everyone has downed two or three drinks, ask for quiet, hold the dollar bill high in the air where everyone can see it, and say the following:

“I am about to auction off this dollar bill too the highest bidder.  For example, if the highest bidder offers me ten cents, she wins and makes a ninety cent profit.  There is only one other rule:  The second highest bidder also has to pay me the amount of his final bid.  So, if the highest bid is ten cents and the second highest bid is nine cents, I get paid nineteen cents and the dollar goes to the highest bidder.  Do I hear five cents, five cent for one slightly used dollar bill?. . .The woman with the red dress offers five.  Now do I hear ten anybody, just ten cents for this dollar?  Do I hear fifteen, fifteen . ..”
                                                                                                                                      

In most cases, the bidding quickly narrows to two people.  When the bidding reaches a dollar, there is a pause.  When the bidding reaches a $1.01, the bidders pause again, and then the bidding goes on up.  Auctioneers have won substantial sums.

I was reminded of dollar auctions recently when two professionals, an engineer and a management consultant, both used the exact same words to describe how much a firm should invest in a highly competitive pursuit of a major project, culminating in a classic beauty contest interview.  Both said, “You have to invest whatever it takes.” 
This may be a necessary attitude to win, if the competition is not a dollar auction.  If it is a dollar auction, thinking this way will lead to disaster:  No one wins a dollar auction.

The first and most important rule of dealing with dollar auctions is not to get into one.  Avoiding them requires recognizing them when asked to participate.  Seductive enticements to participate can be a tip off.  Architectural design competitions, where the clients offer a small stipend to competing firms to submit partial designs, are classic dollar auctions.  Alan Chimacoff of ikon.5 architects reports a joke one hears among architects that goes as follows:

Two developers are talking about the architects they use.  The first one complains about how expensive the bids are that he is getting for an office development he is planning.  “Why not ask them to do it for free?” asks the second developer.  “No one will want the project,” says the first.  “Of course they will,” replies the second, “Just call it a design competition.”

Chimacoff describes how design competitions turn into dollar auctions as follows: 

Competing firms are given a stipend of, say, $20,000, which equals one week of design cost to defray the cost of submitting partial designs to be used in selecting an architect.  They are scheduled to present these partial designs in, say, six weeks.  Every competing architect realizes that she has a better chance of winning with a more complete submission presented compellingly in drawings and a model, so they put in a second week at $20,000 and then a third and so on, until the full six weeks are used up.  The cost to the architect is $120,000 for which she was paid only $20,000.  If the total fee to the winner of the project is $1,000,000 dollars on which the firm makes a ten percent profit, that profit has been burned up before the project even starts. 

Clients may not be aware of the unfairness of the competition they have structured.  Rick Holmes, also of ikon.5, describes a competition for a project for a college classroom building his firm participated in and lost. Ikon.5 did the one week’s design work that the stipend covered and stopped.  Other firms kept going, the winning one submitting a stunningly beautiful (and expensive) wood model of the new building.  Committee members complained that Holmes’s firm had taken their money unfairly, because it hadn’t done work comparable to the competing firms.

Rules for Dealing with Dollar Auctions

More traditional competitions culminating in beauty contest presentations can also degenerate into dollar auctions, especially when work is scarce and firms are willing to spend more to win an assignment.  From an economic perspective, when you have too little work to keep your professionals employed, a money-losing engagement that covers your variable costs and contributes to paying for your fixed costs may be worth taking.  It allows you to maintain your staff and pay for at least a little of your overhead while you wait for an upturn.  As long as the upturn comes soon enough and you are not so absorbed by the money-losing project that you can’t take on a profitable one when it comes along, taking the project will be good for the firm.  One firm willing to take the project at a loss can create a dollar-auction bidding environment.

The second rule for dealing with a dollar auction is to scare off competitors immediately by a seemingly irrational willingness to win at any cost.  So, for example, when the auctioneer asks for a first bid of ten cents to win a dollar, a bidder immediately offers $1.00 or even $1.01, the auction is likely to end immediately, to the disappointment of the auctioneer.  Preemption of this type is harder in a beauty contest among professional firms.  Should one architect who is asked submit a partial design for $20,000, get word out to his competitors that he has be authorized to spend over $100,000 to win the competition, other firms might decline to get involved.

A final way to deal with dollar auctions is to ignore the client’s budget once you get the work.  In the architectural world, a few famous designers are noted for getting their clients to pay much more than budgeted for a new building.  One museum addition I am familiar with purportedly came in ten times over budget.  Either because the architect really convinced the board that the massive unexpected cost was worth it or because the board was too embarrassed to acknowledge how financially disastrous the project was, the board ended up accepting that the building be built as designed and raised the extra money.  Some technology consulting firms also seem to take work at below their costs with the expectation of making it up later in change orders.  I have ethical concerns about this approach, but it clearly works for some.

 Do any of you readers have dollar auction stories?

Suzanne Lowe is asking if your professional service firm’s (PSF) Marketing and Business Development functions are operating as disconnected silos. Could these functions be more effective at collaborating and sharing accountability?

As research for her upcoming book, The Integration Imperative™: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos - Once and For All - in Professional Service Firms, she’s running four very short (3-question) surveys. If you would like to provide your input, you’ll find the link to the first survey below:

Take the short survey

In my last posting, I described three kinds of people (beagles, babblers, and big shots) who will highjack a sales meeting by talking at length. They do so regardless of agreements made in a rehearsal to hold back until you understand the client’s issues. In this posting I will suggest some ways for dealing with them.

As I prepare to write these recommendations, I am reminded of an office I once saw of a high school literary magazine that had a banner with publication’s motto boldly displayed over its three desks: Our Best Is None Too Good! Before providing suggestions on how to deal with those who highjack sales meetings, I must caution you that though these are the best suggestions we have, they won’t work in many cases. Hijackers are tough to deal with.

Here are some things your can try:

Don’t bring the hijacker: See if you can bring someone else who can fill the role the hijacker plays on the team. Though this would be my first choice, it often isn’t possible. The firm may have but one thought leader on the subject the client is most interested in. The hijacker may be the head of the practice and so gets to decide who goes. There can be many reasons why you must bring him. Still, the potential for leaving him at the office is worth brief consideration. At the very least it allows you to daydream about the possibility for a few pleasant minutes.

Plan and rehearse: Carefully plan out who will do what for how long and then rehearse as if this were the plan that everyone will follow. Plans and rehearsals seldom stop a hijacker, but when you apply one of the other techniques, the hijacker will be more likely realize where you are goings and sometimes fall in line.

Bring someone who outranks the hijacker: You may not be able to control the hijacker, but someone more senior in the firm might. This is particularly true of the “big shot” described in my preceding posting. Big shots may walk on people lower in the hierarchy than they are, but usually kowtow to those more senior.

Rehijack the meeting: At the appropriate moment—such as when the hijacker pauses to take a breath—say something like, “Thank you, Scott. That provides the big picture of the way these issues are addressed. I would now like to focus our conversation on the specifics of your (i.e., the client’s) situation. Please, describe . . . “ If you are seated, it is best to stand when you seize control of the meeting this way. If you are standing at the back move forward. This language identifies you as the practical manager of the effort, implying that the hijacker’s role is to provide the big picture.

This approach is most likely to work with “beagles” and “babblers” and especially if there is an agreed upon and rehearsed plan for the meeting. On the downside, it risks the appearance of an argument among the members of your team, which is almost certain to result in the client choosing someone else. So, think carefully about how the hijacker is likely to react, before you try it. I would not attempt this approach with most “big shots.”

Don’t give up control until the client has set direction: Briefly introduce yourself and your colleagues, stating why each one is present. Then, ask the client what she how she prioritizes her concerns, by offering a slide or page of a document that lists alternatives. Say, for example, “These are the issues that most companies concerned with the effectiveness of their sales forces have. Which, if any stand out to you?” The list might read:

The client will then prioritize issues. If your colleague hijacks the meeting now, at least he will be talking about the issue the client feels is most important.

This approach relies on knowing enough about the client’s problem to prepare an issues list and on keeping the hijacker from talking at all until the client says what he is most concerned with. These are big ifs, but I have seen the approach work and, notably, seen it work when a junior person is trying to control someone more senior.

Split one meeting into two: If you can arrange to have a first meeting to talk about broad issues and a second to work out details specific to the client’s situation, you can sometimes go to the second without the hijacker. You might, of course, never get to a second meeting.

Dealing with sales meeting hijackers remains a tough issue. I would be interested in hearing about other techniques. If you have one, please leave a comment.

Professionals I work with often complain about colleagues who hijack sales meetings by ignoring agreed upon plans and dominating the conversation, barely allowing the client a chance to talk. This problem is especially hard to deal with if the talker outranks everyone else on the firm’s team.

This posting will describe three kinds of hijackers. My next posting will describe some ways to deal with them.
There are many reasons that a person will highjack a meeting. In planning how to deal with them, it often helps to see if they fit any of the following three types: beagles, babblers and big shots.

Beagles

It’s hard not to like beagles. Small, cheerful and friendly, they win a place in your heart. Smart, they quickly learn to behave, or so it seems . . . until they see a rabbit.

Upon seeing a rabbit, centuries of breeding short circuit every other thought in a beagle’s head. RABBIT! Off goes the beagle in pursuit sounding his wonderful bay. “Heel!” you may command, but something in a beagle’s head screams “RABBIT.” “Sit!” you yell. RABBIT is what the beagle hears.

You can shout, stamp your foot, threaten, cry, cajole or do whatever else you may think of, but RABBIT overwhelms everything. RABBIT! RABBIT! So overpowering is this genetically based focus on RABBIT that there is little you can do except watch the hunt.

Fortunately, rabbits usually run in circles. If you can find the center of the circle, chances are the dog won’t be far away.

Some professionals behave in much the same way when a client raises a specific issue. Everything short circuits and they begin to pitch whatever it is they specialize in. FORECAST! (or INTELECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION or ASBESTOS REMMEDIATION or whatever).

You may have agreed to sit back and hear what the client has to say before talking yourselves. No matter. That agreement is overwhelmed by the word, FORECAST!

Thought leaders often exhibit this behavior. They seem to feel that all clients hunger to hear their knowledge of a subject. Firms reinforce that belief by trotting them out to talk about their specialty at marketing events.

Like beagles, these people aren’t malicious. Rather, it is as if they have been bred for one purpose, to talk about their specialty.

Babblers

My wife is a second grade teacher. Every fall she must get her young scholars, who have run wild and free all summer, adjusted to the limits of the classroom.

On the first day of school last September, she told a talkative seven year old, “Now, Rachel, remember that in school you can’t just talk whenever you want to. You have to wait for the teacher to call on you.” To which Rachel replied, “You know, . . . I had the same problem last year.” One imagines Rachel having the same problem for a long time to come.

Rachel isn’t the only one who talks too much in spite of reminders. Some professionals suffer from the same malady. The babbler may be an extreme extrovert who gets such a high off of human contact that he talks away, missing the chance to learn about the person he is addressing.

In other cases, the babblers confuse the deference we show to those in power with interest in what they have to say. I can think of at least one hierarchical firm where promotion to partner increases a person’s prolixity even more than it does his paycheck.

This isn’t the talk of a young person who seeks to prove herself or who just doesn’t know techniques for getting the other person to talk. (See He Talks Too Much.) This is the talk of a person who believes, often mistakenly, that other people want to hear what he has to say, of a person who sees a conversation as an opportunity to sound forth rather than to take in.

These people seldom realize they have a problem. Last summer I was asked to coach a former CEO turned executive recruiter. When I cautioned him about talking too much, he looked at me as if I were crazed and then proceeded to talk in almost a monologue for two hours, starting with a denial of his talkativeness, before rambling from subject to subject.

Big Shots

Big shots are firm partners who sell aggressively and believe that there is no other way. They dominate in sales meetings, because they always dominate. If another partner says, “Green,” they are likely to say, “Red.” They have personally landed most of the firm’s major clients and developed it’s most profitable services . . . just ask them. Actually, you don’t even have to ask.

They also knew all along that a hurricane would wreck New Orleans, advised Bush not to go into Iraq (by way of a close personal friend who knows a cabinet member who passed the advice on to the president), taught Robin Williams how to be funny and could bring peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, if someone would just let them.

After dominating a sales meeting, they will tell you that you should have spoken up more. They cannot see their domineering behavior as having anything to do with your silence.

These are the three common kinds of hijackers. In a future posting I will suggest some ways to deal with them.

Charlie Green, David Maister and I are engaged in a debate about the focus of today’s sales management on numbers (of meeting, proposals, etc.)

Do any of you have opinions about the ability to manage relationships by the numbers?

A rainmaker has a large network that helps him generate leads and win more business. The value of a network of contacts grows geometrically with the size of the network. This is known as Metcalfe’s Law and is described in more detail in my book, Creating Rainmakers. Though it may interest you to understand the underlying logic and the mathematics (which are quite simple), you really need to know what it means on the ground during your ongoing efforts to sell your services. Though they happened in the air, two encounters I had in plane rides make the point nicely.

When I started my current firm, it was in a new field for me and I had to build a network of contacts almost from scratch. I had been in this business for maybe a year, when I was bumped up to first class on a flight from New York to California. My seat mate was a dignified looking gentleman in a fine grey, pinstriped suit that even my inexperienced eyes could tell didn’t come off the rack at Target.

We exchanged the normal civilities as we divvied up the space between us for our pre-flight drinks. We then both settled in to our individual affairs. I wanted to meet this man, but knew from experience not to move too quickly. Some time during the flight, we began a small conversation. I asked him where he worked and he named a huge media company. I asked what he did there, and he said, “I’m the president.” My mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. I tried again and sill nothing came out. The conversation ended there. I had nothing to say to the man. I didn’t know anything about his company. I didn’t know much about the media business. A sudden shift of subjects into sports or politics would have seemed odd, and I know almost as little about sports as I do about the media business. I opened my mouth one more time, and once again nothing came out. Some people would have found a way, but I am shy and introverted and I had nothing more to say.

Fast-forward about eleven years, after I had been in this business of showing others how to sell professional services long enough to build a large network. Again I was bumped up to first class on another flight from New York to California. As I sat down, my seat mate was reading USA Today opened full width so that the left page stretched over a bit over the arm rest and into my space. The main article announced the departure of a celebrity CEO from her company. I observed this news by saying, “Oh, she’s out,” to which my seatmate responded, “Yes, and I have nothing to say on the subject.”

Now, that was an advertisement. The man meant that though the world would like to hear his views of the subject, given who he is, he was not prepared to share them. A conversation with this man was easy to start. And here is where the magic of having a large network began. The man was the president for North America of a large biotech firm, so I began to ask about professionals serving that industry. Within ten minutes we had identified four people we knew in common that his firm used and who had been my clients. I had spent the morning with one of them. Another he thought so highly of that he wished she would call more often. Another had a project with his firm that was in trouble, and he said he would be reluctant to hire them again. We talked briefly about the book he was reading and then went back to our individual affairs, talking again only briefly during landing.

The information he had given me provided reasons to call all four people, strengthening my relationship with each one. I was also able to send a book to this man on a topic of interest to him, so strengthening that tenuous relationship. I could do none of this eleven years earlier; my network wasn’t large enough.

And that is why a person with a big network does better at finding new clients, than does someone with a small one. So, how many people will you meet this month and where will you meet them?